Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said there is “no doubt” Planned Parenthood was caught “selling baby parts” and that as president, he would direct the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the group on his first day in office.

“They were certainly caught on film, that there is no doubt that they were selling baby parts. That is unambiguous,” Mr. Cruz told radio host Hugh Hewitt this week. “The videos show senior Planned Parenthood officials selling the parts of unborn children, and it is a federal criminal offense. It’s a felony to sell the body parts of unborn children for profit.”

The pro-life Center for Medical Progress has released a series of undercover videos that appear to show Planned Parenthood executives negotiating over prices for fetal tissue samples. Planned Parenthood has dismissed the videos as heavily edited and misleading and has said the group does not profit off of the sales.

“If I’m elected president, on the first day in office, I will instruct the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood, and to prosecute any and all criminal violations by that organization, because criminal justice should be blind to party or ideology,” Mr. Cruz said. “Instead, it should be driven by the facts and the law, and that doesn’t happen in the Obama Justice Department.”

Mr. Cruz also said the media are trying to politicize the recent shooting in Colorado. Three people were killed last week at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, and accused gunman Richard Lewis Dear made his first appearance in court Monday.

Mr. Cruz said when there is a violent crime or mass killing, “you can almost see the media salivating, hoping, hoping desperately that the murderer happens to be a Republican so they can use it to try to paint their political enemies.”

“Now listen, here’s the simple and undeniable fact: The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats. The media doesn’t report that,” he said.

“The media, just like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are trying to politicize this tragic shooting,” Mr. Cruz said. “This man was a deranged, homicidal killer, and you and I are both unapologetically pro-life, and that means defending every human life, including the unborn, but also including the police officer and the civilians who lost their lives. And this murder was fundamentally wrong. And the efforts of the media to transform it into their pro-abortion propaganda is as transparent as it is despicable.”